President Donald Trump Claims Melania Is A Box Office Success – The Facts Say Otherwise

President Donald Trump recently claimed that "Melania," the documentary about First Lady Melania Trump, has been very successful. The facts say otherwise. Amazon (which purchased MGM for $8.5 billion in 2022) paid a lot of money for this documentary, which complicates Trump's boastful claims about its performance.

At Trump's recent "Board of Peace" event in Washington D.C., he claimed (via the Daily Beast) that "Melania" was very successful and that the subject of that documentary, his wife Melania Trump, is now a big movie star. Here's what Trump had to say:

"She has a very successful movie out right now, like number one. Can you believe this? Big movie star, and I always say it's trouble, because I always say there's not room in one family for two stars. I told her that we can't have two stars in one family, so I don't know what that means, but it's not, it's not good."

Trump has made a few cameos in big movies and was the host of "The Apprentice" for years, so he knows a thing or two about stardom. That said, his claims about "Melania" are objectively wrong. There's no traditional metric that could be applied to this film to justify calling it "very successful." It's also never been number one at the box office and is very unlikely to ever achieve that status before the end of its run.

Simply going off the numbers, the movie has been a theatrical flop by every definition.

Released by Amazon MGM Studios, "Melania" flopped at the box office upon opening in theaters. It took in just $7.1 million domestically, well behind that weekend's other newcomers: "Send Help" ($19.1 million) and "Iron Lung" ($17.8 million). An opening of that size is big for a documentary, but Amazon paid $40 million to acquire it and spent an additional $35 million on marketing. The doc then dropped 67% in its second weekend, making just $2.3 million and falling to number 10 on the charts. It's only continued to quickly fade since then, having made $16.1 million globally to date against its $75 million investment.

Only $279,000 of that total has come from overseas, as the film has demonstrated very limited appeal to international audiences. Bear in mind, Amazon is largely trying to service Prime Video and keep up with current streaming wars winner Netflix. As such, its movies don't need to profit purely in theaters. Even so, something like director Ben Affleck's "Air" made $90 million in 2023 against a $90 million budget while garnering lots of acclaim. That's probably closer to what Amazon was hoping for.

Critically, "Melania" holds a 11% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes but a 98% audience score. The doc also carries a mere 1.4/10 on IMDb. So, while that audience rating is potentially something to boast about, it's not doing anything to help Donald Trump's claims of success.

For the sake of comparison, let's look at some other recent examples of movies in a similar price range to help illustrate what success or failure typically looks like from a financial POV.

Consider how A24's "The Smashing Machine" set an unwanted box office record for star Dwayne Johnson, opening to just shy of $6 million and topping out at $21.1 million worldwide against a reported $50 million budget. Nobody would argue that film is anything but a bomb. We could also look at "Caught Stealing," which made just $33.2 million against a budget in the $40 million range. That made about twice as much as "Melania" has to date and was still considered a huge theatrical disappointment.

Remember, when it comes to determining whether a movie is a box office hit or a bomb, it's never a measure of the movie's quality. What Donald Trump was saying indicated that "Melania" was a number one success. The numbers don't back that up in any way. Granted, we're talking about a documentary, a type of movie that rarely performs like a narrative feature. But "Melania" still cost $75 million. So, while it may well become a hit on Prime Video in the coming months, it's difficult to reconcile Donald Trump's statements with the objective facts the numbers tell us in the here and now.

"Melania" has never been number one on any available box office chart. It isn't a critical success, and because of its cost, it's going to lose money theatrically. Since it hasn't been made available on VOD or streaming yet, Trump can't claim that it's number one in that arena. As the numbers clearly show, this is not a "very successful" movie, plain and simple.